In addition to works by Whistler, the gallery also has comprehensive collections of paintings and drawings by three younger American artists with whom Freer maintained long-lasting friendshipsThomas Wilmer Dewing, Dwight William Tryon, and Abbott Handerson Thayer. Inspired by Whistler's nocturnes, Dewing and Tryon both painted shimmering canvases in which subtly varied colors express the artist's experience of the beauties informing the everyday world. Thayer's work is less indebted to Whistler's stylistic innovations, but his thickly painted portraits of angelic New England women also suggest a painterly faith that beauty exists everywhere in the world if only we can train ourselves to recognize it. No other public or private collection in the world can rival the strength of the Freer's holdings of work by Whistler, Dewing, Tryon, or Thayer.